For Asian brokers, two objectives appear particularly important in the current market context: standing out from the crowd in order to attract clients, and automating their operations.Those are the findings of a survey of the industry commissioned by BNP Paribas Securities Services and SWIFT, undertaken in April and May 2011. More than 75% of respondents consider outsourcing an adequate solution to manage the complecity and cost of post-trade processes.The survey also finds that brokers in the region feel the need to privilege activities which generate revenues for the firms themselves, such as third-party clearing.
The California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) has invested USD100 million in seed money with Breton Hill Capital, a Toronto-based global macro hedge fund with investments in equities, commodity and financial futures, and currencies.The investment, part of the CalPERS Absolute Return Strategies program, is CalPERS first seed investment with a hedge fund manager. The pension fund also has approximately USD500 million invested with customized funds of hedge funds focusing on emerging managers.CalPERS launched its Absolute Return Strategies program in April 2002 and had USD5.3 billion invested in it as of June 30, 2011.
The UK’s Investment Management Association (IMA) has published its response to ESMA’s paper on guidelines for UCITS Exchange-Traded Funds and Structured UCITS. It questioned ESMA’s rationale for singling out certain types of UCITS products while excluding others, such as non-UCITS Exchange-Traded products."UCITS are already subject to detailed regulation. Regulatory intervention should happen only where there is a clear market failure, but we see no evidence of this», comments Julie Patterson, director at the IMA. «Regulators are concerned about ‘complexity’ in retail products. But complexity does not necessarily equate to risk. Sophisticated investment strategies often mean less risk for investors in terms of the expected return», she adds.
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Burton Lifland on Thursday dismissed portions of a USD198m lawsuit filed by court-appointed trustee Irving Picard in the Madoff case, The Wall Street Journal reports. The judge said parts of the complaint are «opaque» and lack detail about some of the transactions by some relatives of Bernard Madoff who all had been working at Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities.But he said the flaws were largely «correctable,» and gave Picard 45 days to amend his lawsuit
According to statistics from the BlackRock Investment Institute reported by AGEFI, European ETFs posted outflows of USD1.8bn in August. This increased aversion to risk largely affected trackers focused on emerging markets equities, which lost as much as USD1.5bn, and ETFs focused on North American equities, which saw outflows of USD1.1bn. Investors appear to have concentrated on their home markets, and European equity ETFs saw inflows of over USD1bn.
J.P. Morgan Asset Management has recruited Nima Tayebi for its team specialised in emerging markets debt and currencies. He will be in charge of investment strategy for emerging markets currencies, and will report to Pierre-Yves Bareau, director of the emerging markets debt unit, and Jonathan Griggs, director of currencies strategy. Tayebi had previously been a portfolio manager at Polar Capital Partners. He also spent 9 years as a manager specialised in emerging market currencies and debt at Aberdeen Asset Management. He had previously spent two years at Millennium Global Investments, a boutique specialised in currencies, and held research and trading positions in currencies (sell side) at Salomon Brothers and Renaissance Capital in Moscow. The emerging market debt teams, led by Bareau, are spread over seven cities worldwide. Their assets under management have increased from USD7bn to USD17bn in the past two years.
The Boston Company Asset Management, a management boutique affiliate of BNY Mellon Asset Management, has announced several changes to its management team. Bart Grenier, chief executive officer, will now also serve as chief investment officer. Joe Gennaco will become chairman in addition to his position as chief operating officer. John Truschel, currently chief investment officer, will direct a newly-created team as global head of investment strategy.
DWS Investments has hired Amédée de Guillebon for its French sales team. De Guillebon will be in charge of fund sales and distribution activities via third-party distributors, including fund of fund managers, insurers, banks and distribution platforms. He will report to Philippe Goettmann, head of DWS Investments for France and Monaco. Before joining DWS Investments, De Guillebon, 36, was head of development at BNP Paribas Investment Partners. He began his career in asset management in 2002 at Fortis Investments in Brussels, as head of marketing.
Allianz Global Investors has signed a global outsourcing agreement with Northern Trust to provide middle office services for RCM in Asia-Pacific, Europe and North America. Northern Trust will also supply settlement and accounting services. As a part of the contract, Northern Trust has taken on a team of 12 people from AllianzGI in Hong Kong, where since November last year, the US firm has been developing its administration services activities. The activities now employ 30 staff.
JP Morgan Worldwide Securities Services (WSS) is planning to develop its custody and clearance activities in Brazil and Russia, two key markets for the sub-custodian activities of JP Morgan, Hedge Week reports. For Russia, Katerina Sizova has joined JP Morgan as head of activities in Russia, and will deploy the group’s growth strategy. Sizova previously worked at Renaissance as head of operations. For the Brazilian market, JP Morgan has announced that it has integrated its custody activities.
“In two deals with international investors,” DIC Asset has acquired a commercial property in Duisburg, the Marktforum (10,000 square metres, wholly leased) for EUR16m, and two core office properties, measuring 40,000 square metres, for EUR62m, one of which is in Karlsruhe, and the other in Leipzig. The latter two properties will be added to the portfolio of the institutional real estate fund DIC Office Balance I, in which DIC Asset controls a 20% stake.DIC Asset, which has been a part of the SDax index since June 2006, currently manages real estate assets of about EUR3.2bn, in 280 properties.
The major US money market funds have cut their exposure to the European banking sector to their lowest level since 2006, the Financial Times reports. The 10 largest US money market funds have reduced their short-term lendings to European banks to only USD284.6bn as of the end of August, equivalent to 42.1% of their total assets, according to Fitch Ratings.
The open-ended real estate fund Degi International (EUR1.58bn) has sold the office property Focus Foltrowa (33,644 square metres) in Warsaw for EUR117m. The sale price is higher than the price the property was acquired for in 2007, but lower than its EUR118m book value.However, the sale will allow Aberdeen to free up liquidity for the Degi International fund, whose closure to redemptions was extended for one year, until 16 November 2011 (see Newsmanagers of 8 November 2011). Liquidity in the fund currently totals 22%.
The new German management firm AD-VANCED Dynamic Asset Management GmbH, founded by three veterans of Veritas (see Newsmanagers of 22 September 2011), has announced that it has received its first advising mandate for a total amount in the tens of millions of euros.Management of the dynamic asset allocation will be based on an exclusive process for analysis of the market and its indices, entitled “Indexpicking.” The process, which relies on investments in ETFs, is used for the first fund of ETFs from the firm, AD-VANEMICS (LU0665450838), which has recently received a sales license in Luxembourg. The new product is available in institutional and retail share classes. The initial subscription period will run from 10 October to 10 November 2011.
The California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) is seeking external strategic partners to manage a multi-asset class portfolio and provide insights and analytics on asset allocation and portfolio construction decisions. CalPERS expects to retain two or three firms to manage a total of up to USD2 billion in assets. The solicitation begins September 23, 2011, and ends on October 21, 2011.
Les investissements en actions représentent 15% du portefeuille de Groupama, contre 5 à 7% chez les grands assureurs. Le groupe détient ainsi 4,22% de la Société générale, titres entrés à 56 euros et qui valent aujourd’hui 15,60 euros, et 5,63% de Veolia, à un coût d’acquisition de 28 euros (9,70 euros aujourd’hui). Nous ne faisons pas du trading sur ces titres, s’insurge Jean Azéma. Ce sont des investissements à long terme et nous ne comptons pas les vendre demain. Cap sur la rentabilité des métiers, la baisse des coûts et la consolidation du bilan. En novembre, les caisses régionales apporteront 500 millions à Groupama SA. Nous leur avons versé 700 millions d’euros depuis 2004, et elles sont excédentaires en fonds propres, plaide Jean Azéma. C’est une simple réallocation des capitaux à l’intérieur du groupe. Il s’agit aussi d’une recapitalisation par les caisses régionales de la société anonyme - une première à Groupama. D’après un analyste, il manque aujourd’hui 2 milliards d’euros de fonds propres pour financer la stratégie et satisfaire aux exigences réglementaires. La réglementation des assureurs va se durcir et pénaliser ceux fortement investis en actions.
Trois sociétés de capital investissement ont annoncé leur souhait d’acquérir des titres de la maison mère du site de commerce en ligne chinois, Alibaba Group (détenu notamment à hauteur de 30% par le groupe technologique japonais Softbank). Yunfeng Capital (cofondé par le président d’Alibaba, Jack Ma), Silver Lake et DST Global, entendent plus précisément racheter des titres aux salariés actionnaires ou aux détenteurs d’options. Selon le site AllThingsD, le groupe de private equity percevrait une part tout juste inférieure à 5% du capital si l’offre est totalement souscrite. L’offre donnerait au site chinois une valorisation de quelque 32 milliards de dollars. Dans le communiqué, Jack Ma n’a pas manqué de se féliciter du fait que «cette liquidité permettra à nos salariés de concentrer leurs efforts sur le développement de notre groupe et de continuer à créer de la valeur».
Barr Rosenberg, le fondateur de la société de gestion quantitative Axa Rosenberg, a accepté une amende de 2,5 millions de dollars et une exclusion à vie de l’industrie des titres pour mettre fin aux poursuites de la SEC. Une faille dans les modèles de gestion, cachée pendant plusieurs mois, a forcé Axa IM à verser 25 millions à la SEC et 217 millions à ses clients lésés.
Les cotisations des Français à des produits d’assurance-vie ont encore baissé en août, portant à 12% leur recul depuis le début de l’année, a indiqué hier la Fédération française des sociétés d’assurances (FFSA). Le mois dernier, le montant des cotisations collectées à diminué de 11%. La collecte nette s'établit à 21 milliards d’euros à fin août, soit moitié moins qu'à la même période en 2010.
Spécialisé dans l’immobilier commercial en Europe de l’Est,Orco Property Group voit la banque américaine monter dans son capital à hauteur de 19,2%. Morgan Stanley Real Estate Investing a échangé ses actions dans plusieurs filiales du groupe contre des titres de la maison mère, une opération annoncée en août.
Le fonds souverain sud-coréen a démenti une information de l’agence Yonhap selon laquelle il avait décidé de réinvestir en actions Bank of America les dividendes issus de son investissement actuel. KIC a indiqué qu’il devait observer attentivement «l’économie mondiale et les marchés financiers» avant de prendre une décision. Le fonds a en outre fait part de son souhait d’acquérir des actifs en yuans à moyen terme.
D'après les données du BlackRock Investment Institute pour « L'Agefi », les fonds indexés cotés sur les actions émergentes et nord-américaines ont fortement décollecté
Le chef économiste présente dans une étude des pistes pour une meilleure gouvernance budgétaire en échange d'une certaine perte de souveraineté des Etats